A group of Czech artists who staged a fake nuclear blast over national television will be sent to criminal trial, a state prosecutor said Thursday.

Six artists were charged last month with spreading false information, said Dusan Ondracek, the state prosecutor in Trutnov, a town 155 kilometres northeast of Prague. A seventh defendant has yet to be charged, he said.

Last June, the artists hacked into a national television weather broadcast showing a panoramic shot of a mountain resort town and the Krkonose or Giant Mountains.

They created a bright flash of light, followed by the image of a mushroom cloud.

Ondracek alleges they tampered with equipment at the station to achieve the effect.

The Prague-based Ztohoven group called the project Media Reality and said it was a commentary on how easily the media can be manipulated.

"It drew attention to the possibility of using images of the world created by the media in place of the existing, real world," the group said in a statement posted on Facebook.

"Is everything we see daily on our TV screens real? Is everything presented to us by the media, newspapers, television, internet actually real?"

In December, the Ztohoven group became the first winners of the new NG 333 prize for young artists from the Prague National Gallery for the project.

A third party nominated them for the award and they attended the awards ceremony incognito. 

The prize was 333,000 koruna ($18,560 Cdn).

However Czech Television did not regard the project as art and pressed for charges, called the work "improper."

Ondracek said a trial could start this month and the defendants could face a maximum sentence of three years in jail if found guilty.

With files from the Associated Press